AT&T store in NJ mall not endearing itself to iPhone users

Take some mall kiosk employees, some iPhone/BlackBerry comparisons, and …

My own experiences in AT&T stores have been generally mediocre, and pale in comparison to shopping at the Apple Store. But a small AT&T kiosk in a New Jersey mall sought to make the AT&T experience just plain bad for iPhone shoppers.

According to a report at Gizmodo, an AT&T regional manager e-mailed store employees several articles collected from the web that argued that the BlackBerry is better than the iPhone. We're not getting into any arguments here; the point is that he intended for the information to be used as a sales tool for stores that didn't have iPhones available. In the retail world, it's called a side-sell; something the customer wants isn't in stock, so a comparable product is suggested instead.

Instead of using the information wisely, however, employees at the AT&T kiosk in the Moorestown Mall photocopied the articles and were handing them out to customers. At least one shopper got laughed at when asking about the iPhone before getting handed the packet of pro-BlackBerry articles. Unfortunately, this kind of behavior isn't going to endear AT&T to Apple customers, and could also hurt Apple's reputation by association. AT&T would do well to take a page or two from Apple's retail playbook and work on improving the customer experience.